abstract
| - The Australian and New Zealand Mounted Division, (abbreviated to the A. & N. Z. Mounted Division the ANZAC Mounted Division, and Anzac Mounted Division), was a mounted infantry division of the British Empire during the First World War. The division was raised in March 1916, and assigned to the I ANZAC Corps. On establishment it consisted of five brigades: three Australian light horse, one New Zealand rifles and a British horse artillery brigade. In 1917, one of the Australian brigades was replaced by a British yeomanry brigade. After April 1917, the standard order of battle was reduced to two Australian, one New Zealand and one British (artillery) brigade, although the Imperial Camel Corps Brigade and other British mounted brigades were temporarily attached several times during operations. The division had two wartime commanders, first between 1916 and 1917, the Australian, Major-General Harry Chauvel who had commanded the 1st Light Horse Brigade at Gallipoli. When he was promoted to command the Desert Column - of which the division was part — he was replaced by the New Zealander, Major-General Edward Chaytor, from the New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade who remained in command for the remainder of the war. Post-war Brigadier-General Granville Ryrie commanded the division from December 1918 until it was disbanded in June 1919. The division, as part of the British Empire's Egyptian Expeditionary Force, first served with the I ANZAC Corps, subsequently serving under the command of Eastern Force for most of 1916. The division served under Desert Column from the end of 1916 until mid-1917, when the column was expanded and renamed the Desert Mounted Corps. The division fought and won all the major battles across the Sinai Peninsula during 1916, and the following year, fought from Gaza to Jerusalem in southern Palestine. In 1918, it took part in the Jordan Valley operations, and the advance to Amman and Ziza, when the division formed the main part of Chaytor's Force, captured 10,300 men from the Turkish Fourth Army.
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